tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7344068351653946740.post1545975984884598661..comments2017-10-16T03:41:00.695-07:00Comments on Versus CluClu Land: Survival, and Sometimes HorrorIroquois Pliskinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14324582950813408440noreply@blogger.comBlogger9125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7344068351653946740.post-25223435155611527122015-12-02T00:05:06.147-08:002015-12-02T00:05:06.147-08:00AgaricPro Obat Herbal Untuk Bermacam Penyakit adal...<a href="http://www.agaricpro.com/" rel="nofollow">AgaricPro Obat Herbal Untuk Bermacam Penyakit </a>adalah salah satu obat herbal yang sangat ampuh untuk mengobati berbagai penyakit seperti <a href="http://www.agaricpro.web.id/" rel="nofollow">Obat Sinusitis , Obat Darah Tinggi , Obat Insomnia , Obat Stroke</a>. terbuat dari ramuan herbal yang sangat berkualitas dan terjamin, dapat juga menyembuhkan penyakit seperti penyakit <a href="http://www.agaricpro.info/" rel="nofollow">Obat Maag , Obat Asam Urat , Obat Stroke</a>. 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Dengan kualitas yang aman ampuh dan terjamin bisa menyembuhkan berbagai penyakit <a href="http://www.tricajus.asia/" rel="nofollow">Obat Ambeien, Asam Urat, Asma, Hepatitis, Jantung, Maag, Rematik, Stroke</a>. <a href="http://agaricpro.com/obat-penyakit-asam-urat/" rel="nofollow">Obat Penyakit Asam Urat Ampuh</a>agaricprohttps://agaricpro.wordpress.com/noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7344068351653946740.post-8841267245048415862008-11-04T13:01:00.000-08:002008-11-04T13:01:00.000-08:00@chris: you see, this is why *you* should be writi...@chris: you see, this is why *you* should be writing about horror. I can kind of paint with a broad brush here, in order to bring out some of the important differences, but as you show I run up against the inadequacies of my knowledge of Japanese culture and horror pretty quick. <BR/><BR/>At any rate thanks for the comment, it really adds a lot to the ideas I put forward.<BR/><BR/>@julian: this is a good point; although I don't know the games in question there are quite a few aspects of Jrpgs that fit into the item-scarcity element. I also like the idea of "survival RPG," as a tag; as I mentioned, I think Fallout has some elements of survival to it (especially in Fallout 3, where I'm constantly running short on money and hitting issues with weapon degredation.)<BR/><BR/>@ben: ah, if only I had an answer for that. One thing I'm inclined to say is that pacing is really important. I think it's a good idea to alternate periods of great scarcity and inventory-management with periods of relative plenty. <BR/><BR/>@l.b.: well, the point I tried to make is that you can make the player feel vulnerable without making their relationship to the character and the action clumsy (with the bad cameras and the wonky combat) <BR/><BR/> Now, on the other hand there's a way to make the player feel like their *avatar* is inexpert, out of their element, without making the controls clumsy. This is different, and I think there's a lot of room for experimenting with this in the survivor horror genre. (when the first info was coming out on Dead Space they were touting the idea that the hero was a miner, not a soldier. But apparently this idea got shunted out in the course of development)Iroquois Pliskinhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/14324582950813408440noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7344068351653946740.post-8469821426289166272008-11-03T01:31:00.000-08:002008-11-03T01:31:00.000-08:00I'm glad you brought up Freud's uncanny. If I reca...I'm glad you brought up Freud's uncanny. If I recall correctly, part of Freud's understanding of the uncanny is that, while it is familiar to us, we can't always tell why, as though it has some indeterminate affiliation with our past.<BR/><BR/>That's part of why games like <I>Silent Hill</I> are so powerful, too. It's not just the creepy nursery rhyme or the Little Sister, it's the can't-quite-put-my-finger on it moment when a plot begins to come together. I think that this is one of the reasons why survival horror games work so well as serial releases, too. The player knows they've seen that girl somewhere before, but where? Trying to place a voice it turns out you haven't heard since the first game in the series.Spencer Greenwoodhttp://noblecarrots.com/noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7344068351653946740.post-15255345412235552562008-11-02T13:39:00.000-08:002008-11-02T13:39:00.000-08:00Survival horror is a weird genre. In a lot of ways...Survival horror is a weird genre. In a lot of ways it was one of the first genre's to experiment with the notion that you could design a specific emotional response into the gameplay rather than into the storyline of a game.<BR/><BR/>On the other hand it's one of those genres that loses it's power once you start to master it. The primary reason that I didn't like Resident Evil 4 was because even on the hardest difficulty I just wasn't that scared that I was going to die. I only started to like the game when I stopped thinking of it as a survival horror game and started thinking of it as an action game.<BR/><BR/>Survival games need to have a really aggressive difficulty curve to make it really work, which unfortunately doesn't seem very palatable to a modern audience.Charleshttp://gamedesignadvance.comnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7344068351653946740.post-60407233080929965442008-10-31T06:01:00.000-07:002008-10-31T06:01:00.000-07:00Huh, I always define survival horror by the game's...Huh, I always define survival horror by the game's refusal to ever allow me to gain much competency at actual play. In order to maintain general fear the game has to keep up the sensation that you might die. Scarcity, tough creatures, bad camera angles, goofy combat...all these things make it possible. <BR/><BR/>I like the observations about handicapping shooting in RE4 with no strafe, it's the same concept but trimmed down considerably. I always found that game kept fear up by yanking the competency carpet out from under the gamer at random intervals then put it back while they ran around.L.B. Jeffrieshttps://www.blogger.com/profile/16612840105075834275noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7344068351653946740.post-5922261474483892702008-10-30T10:20:00.000-07:002008-10-30T10:20:00.000-07:00When speaking to the 'survival' option, the tough ...When speaking to the 'survival' option, the tough question is how does walk the fine line between enjoyable survival and annoying inventory pedantry? Is there an applicable heuristic for this? When is it fun and when is it not? What makes some games fun and other dry annoyances?<BR/><BR/>Yeah, I got nothing but questions on this one at the moment.Benhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/12333328342483122521noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7344068351653946740.post-63221943814572104132008-10-30T09:54:00.000-07:002008-10-30T09:54:00.000-07:00I've been a horror fan for about as long as I can ...I've been a horror fan for about as long as I can remember. While mindless murder is alright, I've always preferred more cerebral offerings. As a kid, I remember checking out old radio play-esque recordings of classic horror short stories, like H.G. Wells' <A HREF="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Country_of_the_Blind" REL="nofollow">The Country of the Blind</A>, <A HREF="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Derelict_(Hodgson)" REL="nofollow">The Derelict</A> and one I remember being especially terrifying, <A HREF="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Horla" REL="nofollow">The Horla</A>. All of these were certainly of the "uncanny" variety. (As an aside, I recently discovered a horror podcast that have a very similar vibe to those old radio plays called <A HREF="http://pseudopod.org/" REL="nofollow">Pseudopod</A>. Check it out if you're into this kind of thing)<BR/><BR/>Being short stories, the reader/listener was never sure how things would turn out. One of the major issues I have with most survival horror titles is, by focusing on a single protagonist, the player knows that everything will likely turn out alright in the end. I don't think anyone would expect Leon to die in the middle of RE4 and somehow have the game continue.<BR/><BR/>This is a consequence of death-as-failure mechanic that almost all modern games utilize. One of my favourite things about Eternal Darkness, aside from the madness mechanic, was its use of multiple protagonists. This means the player was never sure if their current protagonist would survive or not. This made the experience a lot more visceral for me, at least.<BR/><BR/>Leigh just posted an <A HREF="http://www.gamasutra.com/php-bin/news_index.php?story=20819" REL="nofollow">interview with Frictional Games</A> and while they were a little skittish about an episodic horror game, I think that of all any genre, horror would be best served by shorter, more frequent games. A video game version of <A HREF="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Masters_of_Horror" REL="nofollow">Masters of Horror</A> could be extremely successful if it was done right. The Capital Wastes are calling too loudly to make a more cogent point, but there's my shotgun blast of thoughts ;)Nelsormenschhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/06484436433023780229noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7344068351653946740.post-41922233051019732002008-10-30T09:23:00.000-07:002008-10-30T09:23:00.000-07:00Actually, I can think of a few RPGs that use vulne...Actually, I can think of a few RPGs that use vulnerability or scarcity of resources as a central aspect of the gameplay, but most of them are old school and/or dungeon crawlers. Roguelikes in general hinge on making every encounter immediately and permanently dangerous, but they're such a specific niche that they're easy to ignore.<BR/><BR/>There are aspects of survival (in the Ninja Gaiden sense) in the balance of some jRPGs. Okage comes to mind, but it wouldn't surprise me if there were others. You get diminishing EXP returns from killing foes in an area, so it's next to impossible to rely on getting over-leveled, and the balance is such that every new area sees a very large increase in the difficulty of enemies, and power of available equipment. It makes this cycle where at the beginning of every area, you're vastly underpowered and completely lost. Every encounter can be lethal and you're not always entirely sure how to get back out to safety. By the end of the areas, you can deftly defeat most enemies, but they still can still kill you in a couple hits so if you make a mistake you could easily die. Many critics and fans of jRPGs thought the game was just plain TOO HARD, but I personally loved it. It was refreshing to play an RPG where you actually have to pay attention to random encounters.<BR/><BR/>Breath of Fire: Dragon Quarter is probably the best example, though. Your strongest abilities are tied to a persistent gauge that will kill you if you overuse it (and that fills with time, keeping you on your toes and making it so that it's difficult to gauge whether or not you've overused), and yet the balance is such that you basically HAVE to use it on certain bosses. There's an interesting mechanic where you can restart from your last save, but keep some of the XP you gained and a very small number of items. It makes it possible to grind, but because saves and healing are limited it retains that "survival" feel. I've even heard other people independently come up with the idea to call it a "survival RPG," so I'm not the only person that feels this way. If you're interested in the idea of a survival RPG, I'd definitely recommend giving it a shot. You should be able to find it used for under $10.Julianhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/05684168826773165763noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7344068351653946740.post-84561974844044275462008-10-30T04:05:00.000-07:002008-10-30T04:05:00.000-07:00I have found this piece + the noted BG podcast rea...I have found this piece + the noted BG podcast really interesting, but one thing that I think is being overlooked is the religio-cultural overtones that influence the idea of horror in the East and the West. I think the sort of mixing of technology and horror that you mention (which to me in Japan reaches its apex with Kiyoshi Kurosawa's brilliant Pulse) is heavily influenced by the sort of animist Buddhist philosophy that the culture is founded on. <I>Things</I> can have <I>spirits</I>, and so the idea that terror can come right out of the technology that surrounds us carries special weight. In the modern primarily Judeo-Christian west it's a sort of opposite manifestation that has become paradigmatic, as we've seen the zombie ascend to the primary representation--and what is scary here in the main is that the zombie is something <I>without</I> a soul. It looks like a person so it should have a spirit, and yet....it doesn't.<BR/><BR/>(Aside: I think this cultural difference is also patently obvious in something like the way robots are treated in popular culture. In the West for the most part robots are seen as a slightly scary technology that will eventually rise up and enslave us all. In Japan, robots are much more likely to be friendly and helpful and feeling--and often not threatening in the least).<BR/><BR/>There is, of course a lot of grey area here as well. An older property like the Shirley Jackson novel/Robert Wise film The Haunting (and not the execrable remake Of Which We Shall Not Speak) really has a lot more to do with your idea of the "uncanny" than of your idea of the "scary". But really that's from decades ago, and so I guess represents quite a different beast. I think also in the more modern One World we live in that there's been so much cross pollination between the American and Japanese horror genres that differences are perhaps not quite as sharp as even ten years or so ago. But I think largely there still do exist extant cultural differences that maintain a hold and have a big impact when it comes to what those in the West and those in the East find to be frightening. There's probably a book/thesis in here somewhere for some enterprising person to wrestle with...Chris Hydehttp://25timesasecond.tumblr.com/noreply@blogger.com